


From Mullins, with Secrets

by Antiago



Series: Fracture and Reframe [1]
Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: M/M, Male OC Runner Five, Multi, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2019-05-04 13:59:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14594541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antiago/pseuds/Antiago
Summary: The first time he hears Sam's voice, Five flinches.





	From Mullins, with Secrets

**Author's Note:**

> All characters, original plot-lines and dialogues belong to Six to Start and Naomi Alderman. 
> 
> These ficlets probably won't make any sense if you haven't played the game. 
> 
> Enjoy?

The first time he hears Sam's voice, Five flinches. 

The Abel townshipman radiates uncertainty in a way which leaves some instinctive part of Five freezing in vicarious dread, anticipating the inevitably mocking evisceration from a superior officer. 

It does not, of course, come. 

Five forces himself to relax as he listens to Leblond's rote acknowledgment. The pilot's voice is a professional deadpan, but Five is familiar enough to know when she's rolling her eyes. He's been the recipient of the same look several times himself, albeit for very different reasons. 

Leblond flicks the comms shut and returns both hands to the controls. 

"Level with me, Tinman." Five glances at her, careful as always to disguise how much he dislikes that particular nickname. Not that it matters. She isn't looking at him. "You and me both know we haven’t got half of the usual supplies. We've lied to the township!"

Five's gaze lands on the pilot's left glove. The seam is loose, skin showing pallid-pale beneath the torn threads. It's a very small tear, hardly noticeable, but the surrounding fabric is frayed. He knows from experience that any attempt to stitch a hole like that will quickly meet the point of diminishing returns. The problem drags at his attention like an itch. Or a distraction. 

He doesn't mean his silence for an answer, but she takes it as one anyway. People often do. 

"… Yeah, I know, you don’t know anything. Someone at Abel is going to come up to you and say, “I’m here to brief you on Project Greenshoot”, and then you’ll find out what your mission really is. I just..."

Five looks back at the approaching township. This might be his only chance to see it from the air. He reflexively attempts to fix the shape of it in his mind-- the contours and angles. The exits. The places to hide. 

The weaknesses. 

_No._

Five doesn't ask questions. He does what he's told. 

He's never been told to hurt anyone who wasn't already dead. 

It must be something wrong with him, to be thinking like this. The anxiety turning him cold is a product of his own paranoia, his own sickness. _He_ is the problem. He has to be. 

Because otherwise...

It would be easier to believe, easier to trust, if he wasn't hearing the same unease reflected back to him in Leblond's voice. The empty spaces behind their seats seem to weigh more than any cargo possibly could.

With his focus on the township, and with Leblond's words mingling uncomfortably with his own apprehensions, it takes him a split-second longer than it should to recognize the threat. 

Not that it would have made any difference. 

There's a pop, then a shuddering impact. Both sensations seem impossibly insignificant in proportion to their meaning. 

The world lurches. Tilts. 

Leblond's shouting into the radio. Both of her hands are locked onto the controls, fighting for equilibrium as the world continues to spin. The ground still seems far away. Unreal. Harmless. 

Every revolution brings it closer in unsurviveably rapid increments. 

Like many people facing a fatal crisis, Five discovers a world of broadened sensation. Awareness expands. Comprehension deepens. But focus-- focus is highly optional, and a mind suddenly overwhelmed by more data than it is capable or accustomed to processing has many options. 

It's a profound feeling of helplessness, plummeting earthwards in a machine over which you have no control. Caught up in the feeling, Five almost fails to remember that one of his few remaining options is the approximately three-hundred square feet of nylon strapped to his back. 

The radio crackles. 

For the rest of his life Five will never be entirely sure what came first: the thought, the spoken word, the act, or the choice to act. His memory becomes a mess of jumbled fragments, mutually distinct moments spilling like beads from a broken wire. 

_"Open your chutes!"_

The undone buckle hits the back of his hand. Momentum pushes him back towards his seat, a deadly invitation to remain. 

Leblond is silent in the pilot's chair, all of her attention locked into the fight with her failing aircraft. The treetops are close now, so close that, even as he braces to fling himself out of the cockpit, Five can't believe that it isn't already too late. 

_"Jump, jump!"_

He doesn't look back.


End file.
